


Start of Time

by selenakent



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, endgame spoilers, steggy stans have suffered for 8 years and now we get to live in peace, thank u marvel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 03:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18682996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selenakent/pseuds/selenakent
Summary: “I love you, my darling,” she says, always, whenever she has the chance because she doesn’t want him to ever forget it. Because she spent over half a decade unable to tell him just how much.





	Start of Time

It's a perfectly sunny evening when Peggy comes home to a man with Steve Rogers’ face in her kitchen.

Her teeth grind, nostrils flare, and she points her pistol with that much more vigor at his forehead when he dares to look at her with longing in his eyes. She doesn’t ask the man any questions and is completely prepared to shoot him between the eyes when he says, “hi Peggy,” all sheepish and hopeful and so much like Steve that she settles instead for pistol-whipping him and kicking his legs from out under him and pinning him down on her kitchen floor.

Her pistol is pressed to the base of his skull when attempts to speak again, telling her that he’s Steve, that he can prove it. But Peggy feels the hot coals of anger burning in the pit of her stomach, cursing Leviathan for using the most precious person in her heart against her.

“Please, Peg. Just check my right pocket.”

God, he sounds like Steve.

She wavers. She reaches into his pocket, her pistol shaking slightly in her hand where she has it on his head. She doesn’t know what she expects to find when she reaches into his pocket, but whatever he has in there is hard and metallic. She pulls it out to find a compass, one she recognizes and opens it to find a face she recognizes, as well. Her own likeness stares back at her, slightly weathered at the edges and Peggy fights to quell the sting of hope rising in her chest.  

_It can’t be,_ she thinks. _A compass proves nothing._

 But a compass _and_ his voice? She can’t believe—

 “Peggy—I’m sorry I’m late.”

 The compass worked. It brought Steve back home. Back to her.

* * *

 Steve learns to make tea the way Peggy likes it, with loose leaf tea and a ratio of one teaspoon of tea per cup and just a dash of milk. Peggy learns to stomach the smell of black coffee.

Sometimes Peggy catches Steve looking at her so intensely it nearly frightens her; his eyes follow the lines of her nose and her mouth, the veins on her hands, the muscles on her back, as though he were memorizing them, as though she could turn to dust at any moment.

Steve is different, he’s not the Steve she remembers, not completely. But she supposes she isn’t the same Peggy either—fighting for the world, fighting for your place will do that to a person.

But all it takes is for his name to slip out of her mouth for him to come back to her, to smile at her with all the love in the world. She kisses him sweetly in those moments, soft lips and softer words to remind him _I’m here. You’re here, my love._

And if those kisses turn hard and passionate, well, who can blame her when Steve looks like _that_ in a pair of slacks?

* * *

As much as she loves having Steve all to herself—in a perfect bubble of bliss—she knows they have to figure out a way for him to be able to walk around freely again.

He doesn’t tell her everything about he managed to find his way back to her—not yet—but he tells her enough to understand.

Captain America is in the ice. Her Steve is just Steve. HYDRA will infiltrate SHIELD. They need to save Bucky.

She doesn’t know how well she’ll be able to separate the Captain from Steve—she named SHIELD after them both, for God’s sake—but she’ll take whatever Steve the world has to give her.

He may not be Captain America anymore, but Steve has never been one to sit idle. She begins to formulate plans to have him join her at SHIELD. as a low-level agent and have him work his way up the ranks and have him run point on a mission that will bring back Sargent Barnes and eliminate HYDRA from her life’s work. She tries out different aliases for him in her head, thinking about how it would feel to address him as Grant or Roger around her comrades, and settles on _well no one really knew him as Steve, anyway._

Steve Carter has such a nice ring to it.

But Peggy has learned to take baby steps, and the first problem they need to address is finding an appropriate enough way to hide Steve’s identity enough that he can fetch the groceries once in a while.

Peggy is sure she’s started rumors with the absurd amount of food she buys every time she visits the grocer. 

Steve can’t leave the house as is, not with monuments to him littering almost every other street corner and his face still relatively fresh in the hearts of patriotic Americans that believe enough in miracles to think he may come back, like an American Jesus.

So, Peggy suggests that Steve grow out a beard, and it only takes a few weeks for its purpose to become less for disguise and more for the delightful sensation it leaves between Peggy’s thighs.

* * *

Sometimes Steve tosses in bed, sweat collecting on his brow and murmuring a few names that Peggy recognizes, more that she doesn’t.  

But Peggy never pushes him to tell her his full story. There’s a lot that she doesn’t know about this Steve, this Steve that fought in more wars than she has seen in her own lifetime. But she knows the foundations of Steve, the parts of him that made her love him, that make her continue to love him.

She trusts him, allows him to take his time telling her his history. She’ll tell him hers, too, when the time is right.

So she does the only thing she can when Steve becomes frantic next to her in her small bed and holds him, whispers sweet things to him and smiles as he calms in her arms, pulling her close and murmuring the only name he says with a peaceful smile.

_Peggy._

* * *

They dance. A lot.

The radio is always on, and whenever something a little old comes on, something Steve can recognize, or a special song that Peggy loves, Steve comes close behind her and wraps his arms around her waist.

It becomes a comfortable routine, the way she spins in his arms to face him every time and presses her body flush against his and Steve bends down to sing softly in her ear.

“I love you, my darling,” she says, always, whenever she has the chance because she doesn’t want him to ever forget it. Because she spent over half a decade unable to tell him just how much.

* * *

“Do you ever regret it?” she asks one day as she watches him read the day’s paper on her little sofa, her legs bare, thrown over his thighs in an act so domestic it makes her heartache.

His brows knit together quickly and suddenly his hand feels very heavy on her leg. He folds up his newspaper to give her his full attention, confusion on his features as he waits for clarification.

“Leaving your future, the advancements and technology, your friends…for this?” _For me?_

She expects him to take a moment, to weight out the pros and cons of his choice in his head and come to a decision in the methodical way that is so distinctively Steve.

But his reaction is immediate—his face softens, and he actually looks at her as though she were a little bit of a dummy.

When he pulls her closer to him kisses her almost desperately, she supposes she is.

She’d always choose Steve, too.  In any lifetime, in any world, in any reality.

“It’s always been you, Peggy. Always you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> "The compass worked. It brought Steve back home. Back to her." this came from mrgaretcarter. tumblr.com from one of her tags on a steggy compass post.
> 
> I think that the end of engdame was the only time I've actually ever cried happy tears. Like I was full on sobbing, could barely see past my tears. 
> 
> these are just moments that came into my head of how Steve and Peggy could adapt, learn about each other, continue to love each other. also idk how time travel works so im sorry. 
> 
> thanks marvel! now steggy stans can rest.


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